The Ironies of War: An Introduction to Homer's Iliad

Johnston has written what must be considered the most engaging, provocative study of the Iliad in the 20th-century. Perhaps it took a non-Classicist (in the professional sense) to write about the Iliad in such a stimulating manner. Johnston removes the Judeo-Christian tinted glasses that the majority of scholars have worn while reading the text and bases his interpretation on the essence of the Homeric world as found in the Iliad (and a quite different one from that of the Odyssey!). Johnston's prose is not particularly stylish, but his ideas are unfailingly stimulating. Though short (145 pages), this book packs one powerful punch. The only other work to approach it is Redfield's 1975 "Nature and Culture in the Iliad."